Max McCall Talks About Combo Decks and Why They Can Be Problematic

Max McCall Talks About Combo Decks and Why They Can Be Problematic

Our friendly neighborhood Hearthstone developer Max McCall jumped on the forums again yesterday, sharing his thoughts about combo decks in the game. In short, they feel that while a combo deck might be a lot of fun for the person playing that deck, it isn't for the opponent, especially if those type of decks are very common on the ladder. Decks with the goal of minimizing interaction with your opponent and/or killing them instantly are not the type of decks they want to be on top of the meta, so they're careful with printing cards that make these type of decks too strong.

A lot of players disagree with him and think combo decks are some of the most fun and skill-intensive decks in the game. What do you think?

Hearthstone is fun because each game is a little different from the last. Combo decks make for very different types of games, where players can’t rely on their normal decision-making heuristics and have to reconsider their strategic approach to the game. So, in general, combo decks are good for Hearthstone because they add some texture to the ladder experience. But like any other deck, combo decks that become too popular cause issues.

When we make cards like Emperor Thaurissan and Counterfeit Coin, we’re aware that they tend to enable combo decks. We don’t usually set out to make a particular combo deck be a particular power level; we are always worried about missing and making a deck more powerful than we’d like – and that goes for any type of deck, not just combo decks - but that doesn’t mean that we don’t want any combo decks at all. We do want combo decks. We just want them at the same level that we want other decks.

Specific combo decks can be problems for the same reason that any other deck can be a problem: when a deck in Hearthstone gets too popular, you play against it so frequently that it stops being fun. Further, usually popular decks are powerful, so you are also likely to be losing more games than you win while also playing against the popular deck more often than you would like.

Powerful combo decks tend to exacerbate this problem because most combo decks aren’t trying to interact with their opponents on any axis that involves minions. It is cool when, once in a while, you play a game against a deck that is all card drawing and removal and you have to consider how you want to ration your threats instead of finding little victories in profitable trades. It is less cool when you start playing a substantial fraction of your games against “Frost Nova, Doomsayer, go” before getting Ice Lanced out of the game. Figuring out a good trade is more fun than making educated guesses about how your opponent will kill your minions over the next few turns.

I am not saying that some or all combo decks are inherently bad for Hearthstone. I am saying that when a deck is popular, it becomes less fun to play against. Popular combo decks have the further problem that they try to ignore opposing minions as much as possible, which is frustrating for most non-combo players.

This is true whether or not a deck is easy or hard to play, although the decks that are hard to play tend to be less popular because less skilled players don’t play them as often.

Also, saying that a combo deck is interactive because it has a bunch of removal is true only in the loosest sense of the word. Combo decks use their removal to try to reduce their interaction with their opponents as much as possible.

Cards are interactive when they generate strategic options for both players. Minions are interactive because their controller has options on how to leverage their threat and their opponent has options on how to remove it. Removal itself reduces the strategic options for both players: it reduces the amount of stuff in play that can be interacted with.

This isn’t to say that all removal is problematic – removal spells are very important for Hearthstone – but I see the idea of ‘this deck is interactive because it is really good at killing minions’ frequently and I wanted to challenge that assertion.

Most combo decks, in addition to trying to avoid interacting with minions, also try to avoid letting their opponent interact with them. The problem with OTKs isn’t so much ‘I was at 30, then I lost’ as much as it is ‘I was at 30, then I lost, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.’ You can play a taunt minion against a Leeroy combo, but again, most combo decks are very good at killing minions, so the idea that a taunt minion will save you against a Miracle Rogue that’s drawn their whole deck is a stretch.

So, most combo decks try to avoid interacting with their opponents as much as possible, and then win in a way that is extremely difficult for their opponent to interact with in a meaningful way. It’s good when those types of decks pop up on ladder occasionally. But when those types of strategies are too popular and powerful, they are frustrating, and we nerf them.

When they are not popular, we tend to let them be. Usually they are less popular because they are less powerful; often they are less powerful because they have to interact with their opponent. For example, the Aviana-C’Thun combo has to play a lot of C’Thun minions, which facilitates interaction for both players. Combo decks that aren’t super popular or super powerful are great to have around; as I noted earlier, they do a lot to add variety to the ladder.

This may be a bit off-topic, but actually, the popularity of a deck is not solely based on the power level of the deck itself, but how well the match-ups a deck could face. For example, the most popular decks are Pirate decks, Jade decks and Reno decks. It is because the Pirate decks are so good and almost have no bad match up. If you are laddering, surely you would play a deck with the least bad match up as possible. Jade decks and Reno decks are just the counter and the counter to counter thing. Combo decks would just be gone if Aggro decks are the dominant force, even if you tech in so many anti-aggro cards.

Popular combo decks have the further problem that they try to ignore opposing minions as much as possible, which is frustrating for most non-combo players.

Control Warrior (CW) kills every opposing minion through weapons, their own minions, or spells.

Most combo decks, in addition to trying to avoid interacting with minions, also try to avoid letting their opponent interact with them.

Really because CW loves interaction with minions, and will sit there armoring up while they face tank damage.

Rest of the article is the same, but you are going to have a hard time telling me a deck full of taunts, minions, and weapons that tries to get to turn 40 by killing all of your opponent's minions is not interactive.

I agree, Pixywing. At least control warrior has to make more than 4-6 decisions to win a game, and is nowhere near as reliant on opening hand draw. Plus, it makes use of some very cool effects in Hearthstone that are otherwise almost impossible to achieve in the current meta--such as Elise Starseeker.

Otherwise, control warrior isn't OP, it's a tier three deck, and it's more interactive than either combo or aggro decks because you can usually count on 12-15 turns of board play before a winner is decided.

The issue with combo decks (and I think a number of other issues as well) stem from the fact that Hearthstone allows no reaction from a player on their opponent's turn. If there were the option to play even a small subset of spells, or if secrets would allow you to choose when you want to trigger them instead of triggering automatically, then the strength of combo decks would decrease significantly. That's never gonna happen, though, because it violates the "simple" policy of Hearthstone.

For the past 3 years they can't print any cool mage or rogue cards because of freeze and miracle. Killing ice lance and conceal is way long overdue, stop crying about it. PO should have never been printed in the first place, so...

PO by itself is pretty mediocre card. Babycrying about it being OP is overused. It's good because of combo with charge minion (notably Leeroy) and Faceless Manipulator, combo with Shadowflame, to some extent combos with Sylvanas and with Faceless Shambler. Also any cheap card becomes better because of warlock hero power. But, despite its OMG 4 FACE DAMAGE POTENTIAL, it wasn't even used in zoo before warlock got crapload of token generators. Even in Naxxramas with its eggs and spiders two copies of PO were debatable. Only after it, when Soul Fire was nerfed and warlock got Implosion (and then Imp Gang Boss, then Dark Peddler, then Possessed Villager and tentacles) PO became auto-include.

Cold Blood in most situation is better than PO but it's used only in aggro and miracle. Not relying on face damage variants like N'Zoth and Jade don't run it despite IT'S EVEN BETTER THAN SO OP CARD.

Blessing of Might is not so much worse (3 damage for 1 mana is pretty cool, isn't it?) but it saw zero play in anything besides eboladin.

For the past 3 years they printed plenty of cool mage cards, I don't know what you are talking about (or at least powerful, if by "cool" you mean something hipster).

Printing cool cards for rogue is a kind of religious tabu for Team 5. It can't be helped. On the other hand, each time they deside to nerf something in HS, they mandatorily nerf something for rogue too.

4 damage for 1 mana would be pushing it for any class because of charge minions OTK potential. But give it to a class with lifetap (mitigating the downside of losing your minion) and shadowflame and the power level rises to absurdity. Then to top it off, you give said class a competitive card that discovers even more of them regularly... Bunch of clowns really.

For the past 3 years they can't print any cool mage or rogue cards because of freeze and miracle. Killing ice lance and conceal is way long overdue, stop crying about it. PO should have never been printed in the first place, so...

Tbh they don't delete an archetype there, they remove pieces of an archetype that could lead to really un-interactive games.

Freeze mage in ealier versions used to be a kill over a few turns (except in a few games) when they had to use the hero power wisely and count the dmg to prevent you from surviving. With Ice Lance and Thaurissan, they just had to draw as fast as possible, to stall your board and the kobold allowed them to OS you no matter what, in one turn. No Alexstrza needed, etc. The opponent had no real chance to retaliate.

Conceal in miracle rogue is pretty much a matter of "Do you play a class with a huge Aoe? Do you have it in hand?". It doesn't make any sense that a powerful card like Van cleef or questing could grow that much and not be dealt with. What's the point of playing a game when you see a 20/20 on the board, but you have no way of interact with it, no matter what's in your hand.

By deleting those few cards, they allow more room for new cards that could fit the combo decks, and they don't delete the archetype at all. Miracle rogue works still fine without conceal, it just stops them to draw their entire deck over 2 turns, withtout any chance to stop them ^^

Currently at rank 3, after playing today 12 times against same netdeck Shaman and 3 times against SMOrc Rogue and 4 times against SMOrc Warrior seeing only 1 Druid and 1 Warlock and getting turn 5 lethaled 2 times by that same Shaman that everyone and their mother played before tilting out and reading explain why it is combo decks that should be nerfed!

Where are those combo decks that need nerfing so much please point me one I certainly did not see any today.

Combo decks have always been my favorite types of decks, the very first legendary I crafted was Malygos because I wanted to play Miracle Rogue with Malygos so bad, but I guess these nerfs are needed for the design space...

And Blizzard doesn't really care about my opinion because in the design space no one can hear your scream!

That's not the point at all. The fact that aggro decks are a problem right now shouldn't stop the devs to think further about problems that could emerge later on. Nerfs are coming to reduce the power of aggro decks, maybe it'll be enough, maybe not.

But there they are thinking ahead: 3 expansions are coming this year, we have no clue what could be in there, but they have. It means that they probably will give us a lot of new tools for combos decks, and they don't want them to stack with cards that are already obnoxious for the game (understood as player interacting with each other).

They didn't kill miracle rogue or freeze mage by removing those cards. They just removed toxic parts of these combo decks. Conceal doesn't allow any answer for the opponent and allow the rogue to draw his entire deck over 2 turns, then to kill you. Ice lance allows a real OTK without even having to use Alex before. By letting these cards in Standard, they had to be really careful about the new cards they could release, because it could interact with them in a real toxic way. Sure Combo decks are not the problem right now, but they might become one.

And there we have it. A rank 20 player saying how ice lance is op and toxic and conceal is op and toxic while cards like babbling book stay out of your radar. Just don't discuss something you have 0 clue about.